There is yet another point in the history of the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek which must not be passed over. When the patriarch returned after smiting the invading army he was met outside Jerusalem not only by Melchizedek, but also by the new king of Sodom. It was, therefore, in the mountains and in the shadow of the sanctuary of the Most High God that the newly-appointed prince was to be found, rather than in the vale of Siddim. Does not this show that the king of Jerusalem already exercised that sovereignty over the surrounding district that Ebed-Tob did in the century before the Exodus? As we have seen, Ebed-Tob describes himself as repairing the roads in that very "Kikar," or "plain," in which Sodom and Gomorrha stood. It would seem then that the priest-king of the great fortress in the mountains was already acknowledged as the dominant Canaanitish ruler, and that the neighbouring princes had to pay him homage when they first received the crown. This would be an additional reason for the tithes given to him by Abram.

Long after the defeat of Chedor-laomer and his allies, if we are to accept the traditional belief, Abraham was again destined to visit Jerusalem. But he had ceased to be "Abram the Hebrew," the confederate of the Amorite chieftains in the plain of Mamre, and had become Abraham the father of the promised seed. Isaac had been born to him, and he was called upon to sacrifice his first-born son.

The place of sacrifice was upon one of the mountains in the land of Moriah. There at the last moment the hand of the father was stayed, and a ram was substituted for the human victim. "And Abraham called the name of that place Yahveh-yireh; as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." According to the Hebrew text of the Chronicles (2 Chron. iii. 1), this mount of the Lord where Abraham's sacrifice was offered was the temple-mount at Jerusalem. The proverb quoted in Genesis seems to indicate the same fact. Moreover, the distance of the mountain from Beer-sheba—three days' journey—would be also the distance of Jerusalem from Abraham's starting-place.

It is even possible that in the name of Yahveh-yireh we have a play upon the first element in the name of Jeru-salem. The word uru, "city," became yeru or yiru in Hebrew pronunciation, and between this and yireh the difference is not great. Yahveh-yireh, "the Lord sees," might also be interpreted "the Lord of Yeru."

The temple-hill was emphatically "the mount of the Lord." In Ezekiel (xliii. 15) the altar that stood upon it is called Har-el, "the mountain of God." The term reminds us of Babylonia, where the mercy-seat of the great temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was termed Du-azagga, "the holy hill." It was on this "seat of the oracles," as it was termed, that the god enthroned himself at the beginning of each year, and announced his will to mankind. But the mercy-seat was entitled "the holy hill" only because it was a miniature copy of "the holy hill" upon which the whole temple was erected. So, too, at Jerusalem, the altar is called "the mount of God" by Ezekiel only because it represents that greater "mount of God" upon which it was built. The temple-hill itself was the primitive Har-el.

The list of conquered localities in Palestine recorded by Thothmes III. at Karnak gives indirect testimony to the same fact. The name of Rabbah of Judah is immediately preceded in it by that of Har-el, "the mount of God." The position of this Har-el leads us to the very mountain tract in the midst of which Jerusalem stood. We now know that Jerusalem was already an important city in the age of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, and that it formed one of the Egyptian conquests; it would be strange therefore if no notice had been taken of it by the compiler of the list. May we not see, then, in the Har-el of the Egyptian scribe the sacred mountain of Israelitish history?

There is a passage in one of the letters of Ebed-Tob which may throw further light on the history of the temple-hill. Unfortunately one of the cuneiform characters in it is badly formed, so that its reading is not certain, and still more unfortunately this character is one of the most important in the whole paragraph. If Dr. Winckler and myself are right in our copies, Ebed-Tob speaks of "the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, the city of the temple of the god Nin-ip, (whose) name (there) is Salim, the city of the king." What we read "Salim," however, is read differently by Dr. Zimmern, so that according to his copy the passage must be translated: "the city of the mountain of Jerusalem, the city of the temple of the god Nin-ip is its name, the city of the king." In the one case Ebed-Tob will state explicitly that the god of Jerusalem, whom he identifies with the Babylonian Nin-ip, is Salim or Sulman, the god of peace, and that his temple stood on "the mountain of Jerusalem"; in the other case there will be no mention of Salim, and it will be left doubtful whether or not the city of Beth-Nin-ip was included within the walls of the capital. It would seem rather that it was separate from Jerusalem, though standing on the same "mountain" as the great fortress. If so, we might identify Jerusalem with the city on Mount Zion, the Jebusite stronghold of a later date, while "the city of Beth-Nin-ip" would be that which centred round the temple on Moriah.

However this may be, the fortress and the temple-hill were distinct from one another in the days of the Jebusites, and we may therefore assume that they were also distinct in the age of Abraham. This might explain why it was that the mountain of Moriah on the summit of which the patriarch offered his sacrifice was not enclosed within the walls of Jerusalem, and was not covered with buildings. It was a spot, on the contrary, where sheep could feed, and a ram be caught by its horns in the thick brushwood.

In entering Canaan, Abraham would have found himself still surrounded by all the signs of a familiar civilization. The long-continued influence and government of Babylonia had carried to "the land of the Amorites" all the elements of Chaldæan culture. Migration from Ur of the Chaldees to the distant West meant a change only in climate and population, not in the civilization to which the patriarch had been accustomed.

Even the Babylonian language was known and used in the cities of Canaan, and the literature of Babylonia was studied by the Canaanitish people. This is one of the facts which we have learnt from the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets. The cuneiform system of writing and the Babylonian language had spread all over Western Asia, and nowhere had they taken deeper root than in Canaan. Here there were schools and teachers for instruction in the foreign language and script, and record-chambers and libraries in which the letters and books of clay could be copied and preserved.

Long before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we might have gathered from the Old Testament itself that such libraries once existed in Canaan. One of the Canaanitish cities taken and destroyed by the Israelites was Debir in the mountainous part of Judah. But Debir, "the sanctuary," was also known by two other names. It was called Kirjath-Sannah, "the city of Instruction," as well as Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of Books."

We now know, however, that the latter name is not quite correct. The Massoretic punctuation has to be emended, and we must read Kirjath-Sopher, "the city of the Scribe(s)," instead of Kirjath-Sepher, "the city of Book(s)." It is an Egyptian papyrus which has given us the exact name. In the time of Ramses II. an Egyptian scribe composed a sarcastic account of the misadventures met with by a tourist in Palestine—commonly known as The Travels of a Mohar—and in this mention is made of two adjoining towns in Southern Palestine called Kirjath-Anab and Beth-Sopher. In the Book of Joshua the towns of Anab and Kirjath-Sepher are similarly associated together, and it is plain, therefore, as Dr. W. Max Müller has remarked, that the Egyptian writer has interchanged the equivalent terms Kirjath, "city," and Beth, "house." He ought to have written Beth-Anab and Kirjath-Sopher. But he has given us the true form of the latter name, and as he has added to the word Sopher the determinative of "writing," he has further put beyond question the real meaning of the name. The city must have been one of those centres of Canaanitish learning, where, as in the libraries of Babylonia and Assyria, a large body of scribes was kept constantly at work.

The language employed in the cuneiform documents was almost always that of Babylonia, which had become the common speech of diplomacy and educated society. But at times the native language of the country was also employed, and one or two examples of it have been preserved. The legends and traditions of Babylonia served as text-books for the student, and doubtless Babylonian history was carried to the West as well. The account of Chedor-laomer's campaign might have been derived in this way from the clay-books of ancient Babylonia.

Babylonian theology, too, made its way to the West, and has left records of itself in the map of Canaan. In the names of Canaanitish towns and villages the names of Babylonian deities frequently recur. Rimmon or Hadad, the god of the air, whom the Syrians identified with the Sun-god, Nebo, the god of prophecy, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, Anu, the god of the sky, and Anat, his consort, all alike meet us in the names sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldæan deity Lakhmu. The Canaanitish Moloch is the Babylonian Malik, and Dagon was one of the oldest of Chaldæan divinities and the associate of Anu. We have seen how ready Ebed-Tob was to identify the god he worshipped with the Babylonian Nin-ip, and among the Canaanites mentioned in the letters of Tel el-Amarna there is more than one whose name is compounded with that of a Babylonian god.

Writing and literature, religion and mythology, history and science, all these were brought to the peoples of Canaan in the train of Babylonian conquest and trade. Art naturally went hand in hand with this imported culture. The seal-cylinders of the Chaldæans were imitated, and Babylonian figures and ornamental designs were borrowed and modified by the Canaanitish artists. It was in this way that the rosette, the cherub, the sacred tree, and the palmette passed to the West, and there served to adorn the metal-work and pottery. New designs, unknown in Babylonia, began to develop; among others, the heads of animals in gold and silver as covers for metal vases. Some of these "vases of Kaft," as they were called, are pictured on the Egyptian monuments, and Thothmes III. in his annals describes "the paterae with goats' heads upon them and one with a lion's head, the productions of Zahi," or Palestine, which were brought to him as tribute.

The spoil which the same Pharaoh carried away from the Canaanitish princes gives us some idea of the art which they patronized. We hear of chariots and tent-poles covered with plates of gold, of iron armour and helmets, of gold and silver rings which were used in the place of money, of staves of ivory, ebony, and cedar inlaid with gold, of golden sceptres, of tables, chairs, and footstools of cedar wood, inlaid some of them with ivory, others with gold and precious stones, of vases and bowls of all kinds in gold, silver, and bronze, and of the two-handled cups which were a special manufacture of Phoenicia. Iron seems to have been worked in Canaan from an early date. The Israelites were unable to drive out the inhabitants of "the valley" because of their chariots of iron, and when the chariot of the Egyptian Mohar is disabled by the rough roads of the Canaanite mountains the writer of the papyrus already referred to makes him turn aside at once to a worker in iron. There was no difficulty in finding an ironsmith in Canaan.

The purple dye of Phoenicia had been famous from a remote antiquity. It was one of the chief objects of the trade which was carried on by the Canaanites with Egypt on the one side and Babylonia on the other. It was doubtless in exchange for the purple that the "goodly Babylonish garment" of which we are told in the Book of Joshua (vii. 21) made its way to the city of Jericho, for Babylonia was as celebrated for its embroidered robes as Canaan was for its purple dye.

We hear something about the trade of Canaan in one of the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna. This is a letter from Kallimma-Sin, king of Babylonia, to the Egyptian Pharaoh urging him to conclude a treaty in accordance with which the merchants of Babylonia might trade with Egypt on condition of their paying the customs at the frontier. Gold, silver, oil, and clothing are among the objects upon which the duty was to be levied. The frontier was probably fixed at the borders of the Egyptian province of Canaan rather than at those of Egypt itself.

Babylonia and the civilized lands of the East were not the only countries with which Canaanitish trade was carried on. Negro slaves were imported from the Soudan, copper and lead from Cyprus, and horses from Asia Minor, while the excavations of Mr. Bliss at Lachish have brought to light beads of Baltic amber mixed with the scarabs of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty.

A large part of the trade of Phoenicia was carried on in ships. It was in this way that the logs of cedar were brought from the forests at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, and the purple murex from the coasts of the Ægean. Tyre, whose wealth is already celebrated in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, was built upon an island, and, as an Egyptian papyrus tells us, water had to be conveyed to it in boats. So, too, was Arvad, whose navy occupies an important place in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. The ships of Canaan were, in fact, famous from an early date. Two classes of vessel known to the Egyptians were called "ships of Gebal" and "ships of Kaft," or Phoenicia, and Ebed-Tob asserts that "as long as a ship sails upon the sea, the arm (or oracle) of the Mighty King shall conquer the forces of Aram-Naharaim (Nahrima) and Babylonia." Balaam's prophecy—"Ships shall come from Chittim and shall afflict Asshur and shall afflict Eber," takes us back to the same age.

The Aram-Naharaim of Scripture is the Nahrina of the hieroglyphic texts, the Mitanni of the native inscriptions. The capital city Mitanni stood on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, at no great distance from Carchemish, but the Naharaim, or "Two Rivers," more probably mean the Euphrates and Orontes, than the Euphrates and Tigris. In one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets the country is called Nahrima, but its usual name is Mitanni or Mitanna. It was the first independent kingdom of any size or power on the frontiers of the Egyptian empire in the age of the eighteenth dynasty, and the Pharaohs Thothmes IV., Amenophis III., and Amenophis IV. successively married into its royal family.

The language of Mitanni has been revealed to us by the cuneiform correspondence from Tel el-Amarna. It was highly agglutinative, and unlike any other form of speech, ancient or modern, with which we are acquainted. Perhaps the speakers of it, like the Hittites, had descended from the north, and occupied territory which had originally belonged to Aramaic tribes. Perhaps, on the other hand, they represented the older population of the country which was overpowered and displaced by Semitic invaders. Which of these views is the more correct we shall probably never know.

Along with their own language the people of Mitanni had also their own theology. Tessupas was god of the atmosphere, the Hadad of the Semites, Sausbe was identified with the Phoenician Ashteroth, and Sekhrus, Zizanu, and Zannukhu are mentioned among the other deities. But many of the divinities of Assyria were also borrowed—Sin the Moon-god, whose temple stood in the city of Harran, Ea the god of the waters, Bel, the Baal of the Canaanites, and Istar, "the lady of Nineveh." Even Amon the god of Thebes was adopted into the pantheon in the days of Egyptian influence.

How far back the interference of Aram-Naharaim in the affairs of Canaan may have reached it is impossible to say. But the kingdom lay on the high-road from Babylonia and Assyria to the West, and its rise may possibly have had something to do with the decline of Babylonian supremacy in Palestine. The district in which it grew up was called Suru or Suri by the Sumerian inhabitants of Chaldæa—a name which may be the origin of the modern "Syria," rather than Assyria, as is usually supposed, and the Semitic Babylonians gave it the title of Subari or Subartu. The conquest of Suri was the work of the last campaign of Sargon of Accad, and laid all northern Mesopotamia at his feet.

We gather from the letters of Tel el-Amarna that the Babylonians were still intriguing in Canaan in the century before the Exodus, though they acknowledged that it was an Egyptian province and subject to Egyptian laws. But the memory of the power they had once exercised there still survived, and the influence of their culture continued undiminished. When their rule actually ceased we do not yet know. It cannot have been very long, however, before the era of Egyptian conquest. In the Tel el-Amarna tablets they are always called Kassites, a name which could have been given to them only after the conquest of Babylonia by the Kassite mountaineers of Elam, and the rise of a Kassite dynasty of kings. This was about 1730 B.C. For some time subsequently, therefore, the government of Babylonia must still have been acknowledged in Canaan. With this agrees a statement of the Egyptian historian Manetho, upon which the critics, in their wisdom or their ignorance, have poured unmeasured contempt. He tells us that when the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt by Ahmes I., the founder of the eighteenth dynasty, they occupied Jerusalem and fortified it—not, as would naturally be imagined, against the Egyptian Pharaoh, but against "the Assyrians," as the Babylonians were called by Manetho's contemporaries. As long as there were no monuments to confront them the critics had little difficulty in proving that the statement was preposterous and unhistorical, that Jerusalem did not as yet exist, and that no Assyrians or Babylonians entered Palestine until centuries later. But we now know that Manetho was right and his critics wrong. Jerusalem did exist, and Babylonian armies threatened the independence of the Canaanite states. In one of his letters, Ebed-Tob, king of Jerusalem, tells the Pharaoh that he need not be alarmed about the Babylonians, for the temple at Jerusalem is strong enough to resist their attack. Rib-Hadad the governor of Gebal bears the same testimony. "When thou didst sit on the throne of thy father," he says, "the sons of Ebed-Asherah (the Amorite) attached themselves to the country of the Babylonians, and took the country of the Pharaoh for themselves; they (intrigued with) the king of Mitanna, and the king of the Babylonians, and the king of the Hittites." In another despatch he speaks in a similar strain: "The king of the Babylonians and the king of Mitanna are strong, and have taken the country of the Pharaoh for themselves already, and have seized the cities of thy governor." When George the Synkellos notes that the Chaldæans made war against the Phoenicians in B.C. 1556, he is doubtless quoting from some old and trustworthy source.

We must not imagine, however, that there was any permanent occupation of Canaan on the part of the Babylonians at this period of its history. It would seem rather that Babylonian authority was directly exercised only from time to time, and had to be enforced by repeated invasions and campaigns. It was the influence of Babylonian civilization and culture that was permanent, not the Babylonian government itself. Sometimes, indeed, Canaan became a Babylonian province, at other times there were only certain portions of the country which submitted to the foreign control, while again at other times the Babylonian rule was merely nominal. But it is clear that it was not until Canaan had been thoroughly reduced by Egyptian arms that the old claim of Babylonia to be its mistress was finally renounced, and even then we see that intrigues were carried on with the Babylonians against the Egyptian authority.

It was during this period of Babylonian influence and tutelage that the traditions and myths of Chaldæa became known to the people of Canaan. It is again the tablets of Tel el-Amarna which have shown us how this came to pass. Among them are fragments of Babylonian legends, one of which endeavoured to account for the creation of man and the introduction of sin into the world, and these legends were used as exercise-books in the foreign language by the scribes of Canaan and Egypt who were learning the Babylonian language and script. If ever we discover the library of Kirjath-sepher we shall doubtless find among its clay records similar examples of Chaldæan literature. The resemblances between the cosmogonies of Phoenicia and Babylonia have often been pointed out, and since the discovery of the Chaldæan account of the Deluge by George Smith we have learned that between that account and the one which is preserved in Genesis there is the closest possible likeness, extending even to words and phrases. The long-continued literary influence of Babylonia in Palestine in the Patriarchal Age explains all this, and shows us how the traditions of Chaldæa made their way to the West. When Abraham entered Canaan, he entered a country whose educated inhabitants were already familiar with the books, the history, and the traditions of that in which he had been born. There were doubtless many to whom the name and history of "Ur of the Chaldees" were already known. It may even be that copies of the books in its library already existed in the libraries of Canaan.

There was one Babylonian hero at all events whose name had become so well known in the West that it had there passed into a proverb. This was the name of Nimrod, "the mighty hunter before the Lord." As yet the cuneiform documents are silent about him, but it is probable that he was one of the early Kassite kings who established their dominion over the cities of Babylonia. He is called the son of Cush or Kas, and "the beginning of his kingdom" was Babylon, which had now for six centuries been the capital of the country. His name, however, was as familiar to the Canaanite as it was to the inhabitant of Chaldæa, and the god before whom his exploits were displayed was Yahveh and not Bel.

It was about 1600 B.C. that the Hyksos were finally expelled from Egypt. They were originally Asiatic hordes who had overrun the valley of the Nile, and held it in subjection for several centuries. At first they had carried desolation with them wherever they went. The temples of the Egyptian gods were destroyed and their priests massacred. But before long Egyptian culture proved too strong for the invaders. The rude chief of a savage horde became transformed into an Egyptian Pharaoh, whose court resembled that of the ancient line of monarchs, and who surrounded himself with learned men. The cities and temples were restored and beautified, and art began to flourish once more. Except in one respect it became difficult to distinguish the Hyksos prince from his predecessors on the throne of Egypt. That one respect was religion. The supreme object of Hyksos worship continued to be Sutekh, the Baal of Western Asia, whose cult the foreigners had brought with them from their old homes. But even Sutekh was assimilated to Ra, the Sun-god of On, and the Hyksos Pharaohs felt no scruple in imitating the native kings and combining their own names with that of Ra. It was only the Egyptians who refused to admit the assimilation, and insisted on identifying Sutekh with Set the enemy of Horus.

At the outset all Egypt was compelled to submit to the Hyksos domination. Hyksos monuments have been found as far south as Gebelên and El-Kab, and the first Hyksos dynasty established its seat in Memphis, the old capital of the country. Gradually, however, the centre of Hyksos power retreated into the delta. Zoan or Tanis, the modern San, became the residence of the court: here the Hyksos kings were in close proximity to their kindred in Asia, and were, moreover, removed from the unmixed Egyptian population further south. From Zoan, "built"—or rather rebuilt—"seven years" after Hebron (Num. xiii. 22), they governed the valley of the Nile. Their rule was assisted by the mutual jealousies and quarrels of the native feudal princes who shared between them the land of Egypt. The foreigner kept his hold upon the country by means of the old feudal aristocracy.

Thebes, however, had never forgotten that it had been the birthplace and capital of the powerful Pharaohs of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties, of the mighty princes who had conquered the Soudan, and ruled with an iron hand over the feudal lords. The heirs of the Theban Pharaohs still survived as princes of Thebes, and behind the strong walls of El-Kab they began to think of independence. Apophis II. in his court at Zoan perceived the rising storm, and endeavoured to check it at its beginning. According to the story of a later day, he sent insulting messages to the prince of Thebes, and ordered him to worship Sutekh the Hyksos god. The prince defied his suzerain, and the war of independence began. It lasted for several generations, during which the Theban princes made themselves masters of Upper Egypt, and established a native dynasty of Pharaohs which reigned simultaneously with the Hyksos dynasty in the North.

Step by step the Hyksos stranger was pushed back to the north-eastern corner of the delta. At length Zoan itself fell into the hands of the Egyptians, and the Hyksos took refuge in the great fortress of Avaris on the extreme border of the kingdom. Here they were besieged by the Theban prince Ahmes, and eventually driven back to the Asia from which they had come. The eighteenth dynasty was founded, and Ahmes entered on that career of Asiatic conquest which converted Canaan into an Egyptian province. At first the war was one of revenge; but it soon became one of conquest, and the war of independence was followed by the rise of the Egyptian empire. Thothmes II., the grandson of Ahmes, led his forces as far as the Euphrates and the land of Aram-Naharaim. The territories thus overrun in a sort of military reconnaissance were conquered and annexed by his son Thothmes III., during his long reign of fifty-four years (March 20, B.C. 1503 to February 14, B.C. 1449). Canaan on both sides of the Jordan was made into a province, and governed much as India is to-day. Some of the cities were allowed still to retain their old line of princes, who were called upon to furnish tribute to the Egyptian treasury and recruits to the Egyptian army. From time to time they were visited by an Egyptian "Commissioner," and an Egyptian garrison kept watch upon their conduct. Sometimes an Egyptian Resident was appointed by the side of the native king; this was the case, for example, at Sidon and Hazor. Where, however, the city was of strategical or political importance it was incorporated into the Egyptian empire, and placed under the immediate control of an Egyptian governor, as at Megiddo, Gaza, Gebal, Gezer, and Tyre. Similarly Ziri-Basana, "the field of Bashan," was under the government of a single khazan or "prefect." The troops, who also acted as police, were divided into various classes. There were the tsabi yidati or "auxiliaries," the tsabi saruti or "militia," the Khabbati or "Beduin plunderers," and the tsabi matsarti or "Egyptian soldiers of the garrison," as well as the tsabi bitati or "house-guards," who were summoned in cases of emergency. Among the auxiliaries were included the Serdani or Sardinians, while the Sute—the Sati or Sitti of the hieroglyphic texts—formed the larger portion of the Beduin ("Bashi-bazouks"), and the Egyptian forces were divided into the cavalry or rather charioteers, and the Misi (called Mas'u in the hieroglyphics) or infantry.

Fragments of the annals of Thothmes III. have been preserved on the shattered walls of his temple at Karnak. Here too we may read the lists of places he conquered in Palestine—the land of the Upper Lotan as it is termed—as well as in Northern Syria. Like the annals, the geographical lists have been compiled from memoranda made on the spot by the scribes who followed the army, and in some instances, at all events, it can be shown that they have been translated into Egyptian hieroglyphs from Babylonian cuneiform. The fact is an indication of the conquest that Asia was already beginning to make over her Egyptian conquerors. But the annals themselves are a further and still more convincing proof of Asiatic influence. To cover the walls of a temple with the history of campaigns in a foreign land, and an account of the tribute brought to the Pharaoh, was wholly contrary to Egyptian ideas. From the Egyptian point of view the decoration of the sacred edifice should have been theological only. The only subjects represented on it, so custom and belief had ruled, ought to be the gods, and the stereotyped phrases describing their attributes, their deeds, and their festivals. To substitute for this the records of secular history was Assyrian and not Egyptian. Indeed the very conception of annalistic chronicling, in which the history of a reign was given briefly year by year and campaign by campaign, belonged to the kingdoms of the Tigris and Euphrates, not to that of the Nile. It was a new thing in Egypt, and flourished there only during the short period of Asiatic influence. The Egyptian cared comparatively little for history, and made use of papyrus when he wished to record it. Unfortunately for us the annals of Thothmes III. remain the solitary monument of Egyptian chronicling on stone.

The twenty-second year of his reign (B.C. 1481) was that in which the Egyptian Pharaoh made his first determined effort to subdue Canaan. Gaza was occupied without much difficulty, and in the following year, on the fifth day of the month Pakhons, he set out from it, and eleven days later encamped at Ihem. There he learned that the confederated Canaanitish army, under the command of the king of Kadesh on the Orontes, was awaiting his attack at Megiddo. Not only were the various nations of Palestine represented in it, but contingents had come from Naharaim on the banks of the Euphrates, as well as from the Gulf of Antioch. For a while Thothmes hesitated whether to march against them by the road which led through 'Aluna to Taanach or by way of Zaft (perhaps Safed), whence he would have descended southward upon Megiddo. The arrival of his spies, however, determined him to take the first, and accordingly, after the officers had sworn that they would not leave their appointed posts in battle even to defend the person of the king, he started on his march, and on the nineteenth of the month pitched his tent at 'Aluna. The way had been rough and impassable for chariots, so that the king had been forced to march on foot.

'Aluna must have been close to Megiddo, since the rear of the Egyptian forces was stationed there during the battle that followed, while the southern wing extended to Taanach and the northern wing to Megiddo. The advanced guard pushed into the plain below, and the royal tent was set up on the bank of the brook of Qana, an affluent of the Kishon. The decisive struggle took place on the twenty-first of the month. Thothmes rode in a chariot of polished bronze, and posted himself among the troops on the north-west side of Megiddo. The Canaanites were unable to resist the Egyptian charge. They fled into the city, leaving behind them their horses and their chariots plated with gold and silver, those who arrived after the gates of the town had been shut being drawn up over the walls by means of ropes. Had the Egyptians not stayed behind in order to plunder the enemy's camp they would have entered Megiddo along with the fugitives. As it was, they were compelled to blockade the city, building a rampart round it of "fresh green trees," and the besieged were finally starved into a surrender.

In the captured camp had been found the son of the king of Megiddo, besides a large amount of booty, including chariots of silver and gold from Asi or Cyprus. Two suits of iron armour were also obtained, one belonging to the king of Kadesh, the other to the king of Megiddo. The seven tent-poles of the royal tent, plated with gold, also fell into the hands of the Egyptians. The catalogue of the spoil was written down on a leather roll which was deposited in the temple of Amon at Thebes, and in it were enumerated: 3401 prisoners and 83 hands belonging to the slain, 32 chariots plated with gold, 892 ordinary chariots, 2041 mares, 191 foals, 602 bows, and 200 suits of armour.

Before the campaign was ended the Egyptian army had penetrated far to the north and captured Inuam, south of Damascus, as well as Anugas or Nukhasse, and Harankal, to the north of the land of the Amorites. All these places seem to have belonged to the king of Kadesh, as his property was carried away out of them. When Thothmes returned to Thebes the quantity of spoil be brought back with him was immense. "Besides precious stones," golden bowls, Phoenician cups with double handles and the like, there were 97 swords, 1784 pounds of gold rings and 966 pounds of silver rings, which served as money, a statue with a head of gold, tables, chairs, and staves of cedar and ebony inlaid with gold, ivory and precious stones, a golden plough, the golden sceptre of the conquered prince, and richly embroidered stuffs. The fields of the vanquished province were further measured by the Egyptian surveyors, and the amount of taxation annually due from them was fixed. More than 208,000 measures of wheat were moreover carried off to Egypt from the plain of Megiddo. The Canaanitish power was completely broken, and Thothmes was now free to extend his empire further to the north.

Accordingly in the following year (B.C. 1479) we find him receiving tribute from the Assyrian king. This consisted of leather bracelets, various kinds of wood, and chariots. It was probably at this time that Carchemish on the Euphrates was taken, the city being stormed from the riverside. Five years later the first part of the annals was engraved on the wall of the new temple of Amon at Karnak, and it concluded with an account of the campaign of the year. This had been undertaken in Northern Syria, and had resulted in the capture of Uarrt and Tunip, now Tennib, to the north-west of Aleppo. No less than one hundred pounds of silver and as many of gold were taken from Tunip, as well as lapis-lazuli from Babylonia, and malachite from the Sinaitic peninsula, together with vessels of iron and bronze. Some ships also were captured, laden with slaves, bronze, lead, white gold, and other products of the Greek seas. On the march home the Egyptian army took possession of Arvad, and seized its rich stores of wheat and wine. "Then the soldiers caroused and anointed themselves with oil as they used to do on feast days in the land of Egypt."

The next year Kadesh on the Orontes, near the Lake of Horns, was attacked and destroyed, its trees were cut down and its corn carried away. From Kadesh Thothmes proceeded to the land of Phoenicia, and took the cities of Zemar (now Sumra) and Arvad. The heirs of four of the conquered princes were carried as hostages to Egypt, "so that when one of these kings should die, then the Pharaoh should take his son and put him in his stead."

In B.C. 1472 the land of the Amorites was reduced, or rather that part of it which was known as Takhis, the Thahash of Genesis xxii. 24, on the shores of the Lake of Merna, in which we should probably see the Lake of Homs. Nearly 500 prisoners were led to Egypt. The Syrian princes now came to offer their gifts to the conqueror, bringing with them, among other things, more than 760 pounds of silver, 19 chariots covered with silver ornaments, and 41 leathern collars covered with bronze scales. At the same time the whole country was thoroughly organized under the new Egyptian administration. Military roads were constructed and provided with posting-houses, at each of which relays of horses were kept in readiness, as well as "the necessary provision of bread of various sorts, oil, balsam, wine, honey, and fruits." The quarries of the Lebanon were further required to furnish the Pharaoh with limestone for his buildings in Egypt and elsewhere.

Two years later Thothmes was again in Syria. He made his way as far as the Euphrates, and there on the eastern bank erected a stele by the side of one which his father Thothmes II. had already set up. The stele was an imperial boundary-stone marking the frontier of the Egyptian empire. It was just such another stele that Hadad-ezer of Zobah was intending to restore in the same place when he was met and defeated by David (2 Sam. viii. 3).

The Pharaoh now took ship and descended the Euphrates, "conquering the towns and ploughing up the fields of the king of Naharaim." He then re-ascended the stream to the city of Ni, where he placed another stele, in proof that the boundary of Egypt had been extended thus far. Elephants still existed in the neighbourhood, as they continued to do four and a half centuries later in the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I. Thothmes amused himself by hunting them, and no less than 120 were slain.

On his way home the tribute and "yearly tax" of the inhabitants of the Lebanon was brought to him, and the corvée-work annually required from them was also fixed. Thothmes indulged his taste for natural history by receiving as part of the tribute various birds which were peculiar to Syria, or at all events were unknown in Egypt, and which, we are told, "were dearer to the king than anything else." He had already established zoological and botanical gardens in Thebes, and the strange animals and plants which his campaigns furnished for them were depicted on the walls of one of the chambers in the temple he built at Karnak.

Before his return to Egypt he received the tribute of "the king of Sangar," or Shinar, in Mesopotamia, and "of the land of Khata the greater." The first consisted for the most part of lapis-lazuli, real and artificial, of which the most prized was "the lapis-lazuli of Babylon." Among the gifts was "a ram's head of real lapis-lazuli, 15 pounds in weight." The land of the Hittites, "the greater," so called to distinguish it from the lesser Hittite land in the south of Palestine, sent 8 rings of silver, 400 pounds in weight, besides "a great piece of crystal."

The following year Thothmes marched through "the land of Zahi," the "dry land" of the Phoenician coast, to Northern Syria, where he punished the king of Anugas or Nukhasse, who had shown symptoms of rebellion. Large quantities of gold and bronze were carried off, as well as 15 chariots, plated with gold and silver, 6 iron tent-poles studded with precious stones, and 70 asses. Lead and various kinds of wood and stone, together with 608 jars of Lebanon wine, 2080 jars of oil, and 690 jars of balsam, were also received from Southern Syria, and posting-houses were established along the roads of the land of Zahi. A fleet of Phoenician merchant vessels was next sent to Egypt laden with logs of wood from the forests of Palestine and the Lebanon for the buildings of the king. At the same time, "the king of Cyprus," which now was an Egyptian possession, forwarded his tribute to the Pharaoh, consisting of 108 bricks of copper 2040 pounds in weight, 5 bricks of lead nearly 29,000 pounds in weight, 110 pounds of lapis-lazuli, an elephant's tusk, and other objects of value.

The next year (B.C. 1468) there was a campaign against the king of Naharaim, who had collected his soldiers and horses "from the extreme ends of the world." But the Mesopotamian army was utterly defeated. Its booty fell into the hands of the Egyptians, who, however, took only ten prisoners, which looks as if, after all, the battle was not on a very large scale.

In B.C. 1464 Thothmes was again in Northern Syria. Among the booty acquired during the expedition were "bowls with goats' heads on them, and one with a lion's head, the work of the land of Zahi." Horses, asses and oxen, 522 slaves, 156 jars of wine, 1752 jars of butter, 5 elephants' tusks, 2822 pounds of gold besides copper and lead, were among the spoils of the campaign. The annual tribute was only received from Cyprus, consisting this time of copper and mares, as well as from Aripakh, a district in the Taurus.

The next year the Pharaoh led his troops against some country, the name of which is lost, in "the land of the hostile Shasu" or Beduin. The plunder which was carried off from it shows that it was somewhere in Syria, probably in the region of the Lebanon. Gold and silver, a silver double-handled cup with a bull's head, iron, wine, balsam, oil, butter and honey, were among the spoils of the war. Tribute arrived also from "the king of the greater Hittite land," which included a number of negro slaves.

Revolt, however, now broke out in the north. Tunip rebelled, as did also the king of Kadesh, who built a "new" fortress to protect his city from attack. Thothmes at once marched against them by the road along "the coast," which led him through the country of the Fenkhu or Phoenicians. First he fell upon the towns of Alkana and utterly destroyed them, and then poured his troops into the neighbouring land of Tunip. The city of Tunip was taken and burnt, its crops were trodden under-foot, its trees cut down, and its inhabitants carried into slavery. Then came the turn of Kadesh. The "new" fortress fell at the first assault, and the whole country was compelled to submit.

The king of Assyria again sent presents to the Pharaoh which the Egyptian court regarded in the light of tribute. They consisted chiefly of large blocks of "real lapis-lazuli" as well as "lapis-lazuli of Babylon." More valuable gifts came from the subject princes of Syria. Foremost among these was "a king's daughter all glorious with [a vesture of] gold." Then there were four chariots plated with gold and six chariots of gold, iron armour inlaid with gold, a jug of silver, a golden helmet inlaid with lapis-lazuli, wine, honey and balsam, ivory and various kinds of wood, wheat in such quantities that it could not be measured, and the sixty-five slaves who had to be furnished each year as part of the annual tax.

The annals of the next two years are in too mutilated a condition to yield much information. Moreover, the campaigns carried on in them were mainly in the Soudan. In B.C. 1461 the record closes. It was in that year that the account of the Pharaoh's victories "which he had gained from the 23rd until the (4)2nd year" were engraved upon the wall of the temple. (The inscription has "32nd year," but as the wars extended beyond the 40th year of the king's reign this must be a sculptor's error.) And the chronicle concludes with the brief but expressive words, "Thus hath he done: may he live for ever!"

Thothmes, indeed, did not live for ever, but he survived the completion of his temple fourteen years. His death was followed by the revolt of Northern Syria, and the first achievement of his son and successor, Amenôphis II., was its suppression. Ni and Ugarit, the centres of disaffection, were captured and punished, and among the prisoners from Ugarit were 640 "Canaanite" merchants with their slaves. The name of Canaanite had thus already acquired that secondary meaning of "merchant" which we find in the Old Testament (Is. xxiii. 8; Ezek. xvii. 4). It is a significant proof of the commercial activity and trading establishments of the Canaanite race throughout the civilized world. Even a cuneiform tablet from Kappadokia, which is probably of the same age as the tablets of Tel el-Amarna, gives us the name of Kinanim "the Canaanite" as that of a witness to a deed. It was not always, however, that the Canaanites were so honourably distinguished. At times the name was equivalent to that of "slave" rather than of "merchant," as in a papyrus [Anast. 4, 16, 2.] where mention is made of Kan'amu or "Canaanite slaves from Khal." So too in another papyrus we hear of a slave called Saruraz the son of Naqati, whose mother was Kadi from the land of Arvad. The Egyptian wars in Palestine must necessarily have resulted in the enslavement of many of its inhabitants, and, as we have seen, a certain number of young slaves formed part of the annual tax levied upon Syria.

The successors of Thothmes III. extended the Egyptian empire far to the south in the Soudan. But its Asiatic limits had already been reached. Palestine, along with Phoenicia, the land of the Amorites and the country east of the Jordan, was constituted into an Egyptian province and kept strictly under Egyptian control. Further north the connection with the imperial government was looser. There were Egyptian fortresses and garrisons here and there, and certain important towns like Tunip near Aleppo and Qatna on the Khabûr were placed under Egyptian prefects. But elsewhere the conquered populations were allowed to remain under their native kings. In some instances, as, for example, in Anugas or Nukhasse, the kings were little more than satraps of the Pharaoh, but in other instances, like Alasiya, north of Hamath, they resembled the rulers of the protected states in modern India. In fact, the king of Alasiya calls the Pharaoh his "brother," and except for the obligation of paying tribute was practically an independent sovereign.

The Egyptian dominion was acknowledged as far north as Mount Amanus. Carchemish, soon to become a Hittite stronghold, was in Egyptian hands, and the Hittites themselves had not yet emerged from the fortresses of the Taurus. Their territory was still confined to Kataonia and Armenia Minor between Melitênê and the Saros, and they courted the favour of the Egyptian monarch by sending him gifts. Thothmes would have refused to believe that before many years were over they would wrest Northern Syria from his successors, and contend on equal terms with the Egyptian Pharaoh.

The Egyptian possessions on the east bank of Euphrates lay along the course of the Khabûr, towards the oasis of Singar or Shinar. North of the Belikh came the powerful kingdom of Mitanni, Aram-Naharaim as it is called in the Old Testament, which was never subdued by the Egyptian arms, and whose royal family intermarried with the successors of Thothmes. Mitanni, the capital, stood nearly opposite Carchemish, which thus protected the Egyptian frontier on the east.

Southward of the Belikh the frontier was formed by the desert. Syria, Bashan, Ammon, and Moab were all included in the Pharaoh's empire. But there it came to an end. Mount Seir was never conquered by the Egyptians. The "city" of Edom appears in one of the Tel el-Amarna tablets as a foreign state whose inhabitants wage war against the Egyptian territory. The conquest of the Edomites in their mountain fastnesses would have been a matter of difficulty, nor would anything have been gained by it. Edom was rich neither agriculturally nor commercially; it was, in fact, a land of barren mountains, and the trade which afterwards passed through the Arabah to Elath and Ezion-geber in the Gulf of Aqabah was already secured to the Egyptians through their possession of the Gulf of Suez. The first and last of the Pharaohs, so far as we know, who ventured on a campaign against the wild tribes of Mount Seir, was Ramses III. of the twentieth dynasty, and his campaign was merely a punitive one. No attempt to incorporate the "Red Land" into his dominions was ever made by an Egyptian king.

The Sinaitic peninsula, the province of Mafkat or "Malachite," as it was called, had been in the possession of the Egyptians since the time of Zosir of the third dynasty, and it continued to be regarded as part of the Egyptian kingdom up to the age of the Ptolemies. The earliest of Egyptian rock-sculptures is engraved in the peninsula, and represents Snefru, the founder of the fourth dynasty, slaughtering the Beduin who inhabited it. Its possession was valued on account of its mines of copper and malachite. These were worked by the Egyptian kings with the help of convict labour. Garrisons were established to protect them and the roads which led to them, colonies of officials grew up at their side, and temples were built dedicated to the deities of Egypt. Even as late as the reign of Ramses III. the amount of minerals produced by the mines was enormous. They existed for the most part on the western side of the peninsula, opposite the Egyptian coast; but Ramses III. also opened copper mines in the land of 'Ataka further east, and the name of the goddess Hathor in hieroglyphics has been found by Dr. Friedmann on the shores of Midian.

Vanquished Syria was made to contribute to the endowments of the Egyptian temples. Thus the temple of Amon at Thebes was endowed by Thothmes III. with the revenues of the three cities Anugas, Inu'am, and Harankal; while Seti I., the father of Ramses II., bestowed upon it "all the silver, gold, lapis-lazuli, malachite, and precious stones which he carried off from the humbled land of Syria." Temples of the Egyptian gods, as well as towns, were built in Syria itself; Meneptah founded a city in the land of the Amorites; Ramses III. erected a temple to Amon in "the land of Canaan, great as the horizon of heaven above, to which the people of Syria come with their gifts"; and hieroglyphic inscriptions lately discovered at Gaza show that another temple had been built there by Amenophis II. to the goddess Mut.

Amenophis had suppressed the rebellion in Northern Syria with little trouble. Seven Amorite kings were carried prisoners to Egypt from the land of Takhis, and taken up the river as far as Thebes. There six of them were hung outside the walls of the city, as the body of Saul was hung by the Philistines outside the walls of Beth-shan, while the seventh was conveyed to Napata in Ethiopia, and there punished in the same way in order to impress a lesson of obedience upon the negroes of the Soudan.

Amenophis II. was succeeded by Thothmes IV., who was called upon to face a new enemy, the Hittites. It was at the commencement of his reign that they first began to descend from their mountain homes, and the frontier city of Tunip had to bear the brunt of the attack. It was probably in order to strengthen himself against these formidable foes that the Pharaoh married the daughter of the king of Mitanni, who changed her name to Mut-em-ua. It was the beginning of those inter-marriages with the princes of Asia which led to the Asiatized court and religion of Amenophis IV., and finally to the overthrow of the eighteenth dynasty.

The son of Mut-em-ua was Amenophis III., whose long reign of thirty-seven years was as brilliant and successful as that of Thothmes III. At Soleb between the second and third cataracts he built a temple to his own deified self, and engraved upon its columns the names of his vassal states. Among them are Tunip and Kadesh, Carchemish and Apphadana on the Khabûr. Sangar, Assyria, Naharaim, and the Hittites also appear among them, but this must be on the strength of the tribute or presents which had been received from them. The Pharaoh filled his harîm with Asiatic princesses. His queen Teie, who exercised an important influence upon both religion and politics, came from Asia, and among his wives were the sisters and daughters of the kings of Babylonia and Mitanni, while one of his own daughters was married to Burna-buryas the Babylonian sovereign. His marriage with Gilu-khipa, the daughter of Sutarna, king of Aram-Naharaim, was celebrated on a scarab, where it is further related that she was accompanied to Egypt by three hundred and seventeen "maids of honour." Besides allying himself in marriage to the royal houses of Asia, Amenophis III. passed a good deal of his time in Syria and Mesopotamia, amusing himself with hunting lions. During the first ten years of his reign he boasts of having killed no less than one hundred and two of them. It was in the last of these years that he married queen Teie, who is said on scarabs to have been the daughter of "Yua and Tua." Possibly these are contracted forms of Tusratta and Yuni, who were at the time king and queen of Mitanni. But if so, it is curious that no royal titles are given to her parents; moreover, the author of the scarabs has made Yua the father of the queen and Tua her mother. Tuya is the name of an Amorite in one of the Tel el-Amarna letters, while from another of them it would seem as if Teie had been the daughter of the Babylonian king. One of the daughters of Tusratta, Tadu-khipa, was indeed married to Amenophis, but she did not rank as chief queen. In the reign of Meneptah of the nineteenth dynasty the vizier was a native of Bashan, Ben-Mazana by name, whose father was called Yu the elder. Yua may therefore be a word of Amorite origin; and a connection has been suggested between it and the Hebrew Yahveh. This, however, though possible, cannot be proved.

When Amenophis III. died his son Amenophis IV. seems to have been still a minor. At all events the queen-mother Teie became all-powerful in the government of the state. Her son, the new Pharaoh, had been brought up in the religious beliefs of his mother, and had inherited the ideas and tendencies of his Asiatic forefathers. A plaster-cast of his face, taken immediately after death, was discovered by Prof. Petrie at Tel el-Amarna, and it is the face of a refined and thoughtful theorist, of a philosopher rather than of a king, earnest in his convictions almost to fanaticism.

Amenophis IV. undertook no less a task than that of reforming the State religion of Egypt. For many centuries the religion of the priests and scribes had been inclining to pantheism. Inside the temples there had been an esoteric teaching, that the various deities of Egypt were but manifestations of the one supreme God. But it had hardly passed outside them. With the accession of Amenophis IV. to the throne came a change. The young king boldly rejected the religion of which he was officially the head, and professed himself a worshipper of the one God whose visible semblance was the solar disk. Alone of the deities of Egypt Ra, the ancient Sun-god of Heliopolis, was acknowledged to be the representative of the true God. It was the Baal-worship of Syria, modified by the philosophic conceptions of Egypt. The Aten-Ra of the "heretic" Pharaoh was an Asiatic Baal, but unlike the Baal of Canaan he stood alone; there were no other Baals, no Baalim, by the side of him.